Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: ‘Goddess of Anarchy’

Lucy Parsons would stand out today, so one can imagine the scene she created as a woman in the second half of the 19th century espousing anarchy for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism. An African-American born into slavery, Parsons grew up to fashion a story about herself, claiming to be the daughter of Mexican and Native American parents. In her new biography, “Goddess of Anarchy,” Jacqueline Jones writes that Parsons “rejected a personal historical or ethnic identity in favor of presenting herself as the champion of the laboring classes; that, she thought, was all that people needed to know about her.” Ms. Jones, who won the Bancroft Prize in 1986 for her book “Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present,” teaches in the history department at the University of Texas at Austin. Below, she talks about the new information she unearthed about Parsons, the way Parsons captivated crowds and much more.

When did you first get the idea to write this book?

I’ve taught an American history survey for many years, and I’m always looking to introduce my students to interesting women from the past. Lucy Parsons has stood out for her politics. The last biography of her, by Carolyn Ashbaugh, came out in 1976. That book provided a really good outline of her life. It was very laudatory. Ashbaugh wanted to portray her in the best possible light, and that’s not hard to do. She was a formidable person. But a lot of the sources that I found were not in Ashbaugh’s book, just because they weren’t accessible to her. There’s always been a mystery surrounding Parsons’ origins. It was time to dig into her past and see where she came from, especially since we have all these new digital resources.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

There were lots of surprising things, because Parsons wasn’t always honest about her life and her background. Only three pages of Ashbaugh’s biography are devoted to the first 20 years or so of her life because it was hard to find out where she came from. I managed to trace that. She was born to an enslaved woman in Virginia, in 1851. She always denied she had been born a slave; she assumed a whole new identity for herself.

I was able to piece together her life because I found the Rosetta stone in, of all places, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1886, which gave the name of Parsons’ mother and former owner. I confirmed that information through a variety of sources. One of the complicating factors was that there were a lot of name changes. After freedom, a lot of slaves abandoned the name of their owner and took a new last name.

In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

I wasn’t sure what I was going to find. I was able to write a whole section on the reaction of the crowds on her speaking tour — to what she said, the way she said it, how she was dressed. I was startled to realize that she was such a celebrity in her own day. A lot of people today have never heard of her. I thought she was part of a very radical, very small group of anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But she was very well known throughout the United States, especially when she began to launch her own speaking tours in 1886, when her husband was in prison. Her name was really a household word. She was never happier than speaking in front of large crowds, riling them up. Her politics were very radical, quite outside the mainstream — then and today. But workers loved her rhetoric. She condemned the employers, the capitalist machine, the corrupt two-party system. She knew that undercover detectives covered every one of her speeches. I think she was never happier than when she was dodging the police.

Image

Jacqueline JonesCreditBrian Birzer

Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

My grandmother Clara Maria Chapin Phelps, born in 1876. She inspired me with her love for words and mastery of the English language. In 1898, she graduated from Smith College, where she majored in Greek and Latin. She went on to teach a year or two of high school in Shrewsbury, Mass. Then she married my grandfather. They had eight children. She didn’t work outside the home, but she worked a lot inside it, raising eight kids on a shoestring budget and helping with her husband’s gravel and sandpit business in the tiny town of Christiana, Del.

My parents built a house next door, so when I was growing up I saw her all the time. After school I would stop in to see her and talk about my day. I would find her either reading a book or doing word puzzles — not just crossword puzzles, but all sorts of intricate word games, the kind that came in the daily paper. She taught me early on that there was a wider world outside the confines of Christiana — a world of the imagination and great literature. Although she died when I was only 12, she had an enormous effect on my life. In a way I am still trying to catch up with her.

Persuade someone to read “Goddess of Anarchy” in 50 words or less.

Lucy Parsons was famous and infamous. And she was prescient about what we’re facing today: the growing gap between rich and poor, the effect of technological innovation in the workplace, the inability of Democrats and Republicans to address gross injustice. The contradictions and ironies in her life make her fascinating.